Mario MorejonD-Link Xtreme N Storage Router (DIR-685)Though pricey, the D-Link DIR-685 offers far more for consumers than most other Wi-Fi routers on the market in the form of unique multimedia extras.

Though pricey, the D-Link DIR-685 offers far more for consumers than most other Wi-Fi routers on the market in the form of unique multimedia extras.

Features
On the 3.2 inch LCD, there isn't much you can do with the setup. The LCD has a ribbon that displays performance statistics, router status, basic settings and photos, including a FrameChannel service. That's a free, customizable service for displaying digital media on digital photo frames. Once activated, it can stream pages from sites such as the New York Times, BBC News and People.com. You can even setup when you want to see the pages from these services. It will also display images from sharing sites like Flickr, MobileMe, Facebook, and Picasa.

The DIR-685 includes an iTunes service and a BitTorrent download service. You can enable them via in the Storage tab in the router interface. If you are used to using BitTorrent files, the BT Download Manager will be a breeze to use. Just setup a destination folder that you want to share, and URLs from Torrents that you want to download. The router does the rest. What's awkward is that you have to go to that spot in the router's Web interface to download torrents every time you start a new one. Including a UPnP AV server means video's stored on the drive can be viewed on devices like the Xbox 360 or PS3.

The other useful feature on the LCD is the Statistics, which displays Wireless, Network and Internet data. You can view the traffic in real time that's flowing between your router and the Internet, or the LAN traffic across the Ethernet ports. It can be confusing, as the gauges are not clear about what flows out and what is being generated inside. Moreover, the gauges don't provide the total traffic that it is being used, a key feature that would allow Comcast users, for example, to see how much bandwidth they are consuming each month.

D-Link provides Wi-Fi Protected Service (WPS) interface on the display, making the push-button security setup even easier to use. Even with encryption on, the DIR-685 has a Guest Zone that allows friends to access your network without having to ask for a password. D-Link added routing between your private and guest zone, to form a bridge where you can share data from your computer with guests. You can encrypt the guest access with WPA2, just as you would with your internal Wi-Fi network.

The Storage feature also has an FTP server that's fairly easy to use. The DIR-685 uses it to provide external access to the hard drive. Placing the FTP server in Internet/WAN mode opens the standard FTP port on the router that you can use to access your media files.

Performance
The D-Link was an average performer in my Wi-Fi testing. I used ixChariot with a Windows Vista laptop and measured throughput at three distances. At three feet, the router reached 75 Mbps. In 2.4 GHz mode, our Editor's Choice the D-Link DIR-825 Xtreme N Dual Band Gigabit Router got to 80 Mbps.

Moving it back to 20 feet, the DIR-685 hit 56 Mbps. At 50 feet it was 38 Mbps, which is average when compared with other routers in its class. At the same band, the DIR-825, for example, produced 56 Mbps and the Linksys WRT320N scored 29 Mbps. All in all, it's not bad for a router, especially one with all the extras it has.

Bottom Line
D-Link is breaking new grounds with the design of the DIR-685, something the market is more than ready for (imagine a full-sized digital picture frame that doubles as router, NAS, and more...) The DIR-685 runs cool and yet it is quite compact for such a complex device. Feature wise, the DIR-685 won't disappoint the most demanding users, unless you're expecting full-blown TV. D-Link packed many advanced features that expand the capability of the router beyond the usual firewalling and port management. This is one cool piece of networking.

Mario Morejon is PCMag’s Lead Analyst for Networking and Small Business. In addition to maintaining the network infrastructure at PCMag Labs, Mario tests all sorts of software and hardware tools that help small business get bigger.
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